Yet both men remained products of their (roughly shared) time—artists who wanted
to convey the power and significance of human appearance and action, usually in
biblical subjects but with a heightened focus through such means as reduced
setting and contrasts of lighting. Both Caravaggio (whose real attention from
art historians really dates back only to the mid-twentieth century) and
Rembrandt painted pictures (and Rembrandt etched prints) that command our
attention, that seem to matter, and that pose for us a few fellow humans at
moments of maximal concentration. Scholarship can elucidate the models, the
audiences, the sub- jects, and the content of such pictures. But it is their
undeniable power that draws us back or stops us in our tracks (amidst the
madding exhibition crowd) for a long gaze.

Fallout from this Rembrandt year will doubtless continue to shape scholarship on
the artist for years to come, like the data transmitted back from interplanetary
satellites. Their very diversity is testimony to the lively state of Rembrandt
studies and ultimately to the endless fascination generated by his art.

Suggested Readings:

Clifford Ackley, Rembrandt’s Journey, exh. cat. (Boston,
2003)

Anthony Bailey, Responses to Rembrandt (New York, 1994)

Harry Berger, Fictions of the Pose: Rembrandt against the
Italian Renaissance

(Stanford, 2000)

Perry Chapman, Rembrandt’s Self-Portraits (Princeton, 1990)

Paul Crenshaw, Rembrandt’s Bankruptcy (Cambridge, 2006)

Stephanie Dickey, Rembrandt Portraits in Print (Amsterdam,
2004)

Amy Golahny, Rembrandt’s Reading (Amsterdam, 2003)

Stephen Nadler, Rembrandt’s Jews (Chicago, 2003)

Shelley Perlove and Larry Silver, Rembrandt’s Faith (in
press)

Rembrandt by Himself, exh. cat. (London-The Hague, 1999)

Rembrandt Creates Rembrandt, exh. cat. (Boston: Gardner
Museum, 2000)

Rembrandt/Not Rembrandt in the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
Aspects of

Connoisseurship, 2 vols., exh. cat. (New York,
1995)

Rembrandt’s Treasures, exh. cat. (Amsterdam, 2001)

Catherine Scallen, Rembrandt, Reputation, and the Practice of
Connoisseurship

(Amsterdam, 2004)

Gary Schwartz, Rembrandt (Antwerp, 2006)

Uylenburch & Son, exh. cat. (Dulwich-Amsterdam, 2006)

Ernst van de Wetering, Rembrandt: The Painter at Work
(Amsterdam, 1997)